The Fourteen Year Recession

“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

“A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men … [W]e have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world—no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.”- Woodrow Wilson

When you ponder the implications of allowing a small group of powerful wealthy unaccountable men to control the currency of a nation over the last one hundred years, you understand why our public education system sucks. You understand why the government created Common Core curriculum teaches children that 3 x 4 = 13, as long as you feel good about your answer. George Carlin was right. The owners of this country (bankers, billionaires, corporate titans, politicians) want more for themselves and less for everyone else. They want an educational system that creates ignorant, obedient, vacuous, obese dullards who question nothing, consume mass quantities of corporate processed fast food, gaze at iGadgets, are easily susceptible to media propaganda and compliant to government regulations and directives. They don’t want highly educated, critical thinking, civil minded, well informed, questioning citizens understanding how badly they have been screwed over the last century. I’m sorry to say, your owners are winning in a landslide.

The government controlled public education system has flourished beyond all expectations of your owners. We’ve become a nation of techno-narcissistic, math challenged, reality TV distracted, welfare entitled, materialistic, gluttonous, indebted consumers of Chinese slave labor produced crap. There are more Americans who know the name of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s bastard child (North West) than know the name of our Secretary of State (Ketchup Kerry). Americans can generate a text or tweet with blinding speed but couldn’t give you change from a dollar bill if their life depended upon it. They are whizzes at buying crap on Amazon or Ebay with a credit card, but have never balanced their checkbook or figured out the concept of deferred gratification and saving for the future. While the ignorant masses are worked into a frenzy by the media propaganda machine over gay marriage, diversity, abortion, climate change, and never ending wars on poverty, drugs and terror, our owners use their complete capture of the financial, regulatory, political, judicial and economic systems to pillage the remaining national wealth they haven’t already extracted.

The financial illiteracy of the uneducated lower classes and the willful ignorance of the supposedly highly educated classes has never been more evident than when examining the concept of Federal Reserve created currency debasement – also known as inflation. The insidious central banker created monetary inflation is the cause of all the ills in our warped, deformed, rigged financialized economic system. The outright manipulation and falsity of government reported economic data is designed to obscure the truth and keep the populace unaware of the deception being executed by the owners of this country. They have utilized deceit, falsification, propaganda and outright lies to mislead the public about the true picture of the disastrous financial condition in this country. Since most people are already trapped in the mental state of normalcy bias, it is easy for those in control to reinforce that normalcy bias by manipulating economic data to appear normal and using their media mouthpieces to perpetuate the false storyline of recovery and a return to normalcy.

This is how feckless politicians and government apparatchiks are able to add $2.8 billion per day to the national debt; a central bank owned by Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks has been able to create $3.3 trillion out of thin air and pump it into the veins of its owners; and government controlled agencies report a declining unemployment rate, no inflation and a growing economy, without creating an iota of dissent or skepticism from the public. Americans want to be lied to because it allows them to continue living lives of delusion, where spending more than you make, consuming rather than saving, and believing stock market speculation and home price appreciation will make them rich are viable life strategies. Even though 90% of the population owns virtually no stocks, they are convinced record stock market highs are somehow beneficial to their lives. They actually believe Bernanke/Yellen when they bloviate about the dangers of deflation. Who would want to pay less for gasoline, food, rent, or tuition?

Unless you are beholden to the oligarchs, that sense of stress, discomfort, feeling that all in not well, and disturbing everyday visual observations is part of the cognitive dissonance engulfing the nation. Anyone who opens their eyes and honestly assesses their own financial condition, along with the obvious deterioration of our suburban sprawl retail paradise infrastructure, is confronted with information that is inconsistent with what they hear from their bought off politician leaders, highly compensated Ivy League trained economists, and millionaire talking heads in the corporate legacy media. Most people resolve this inconsistency by ignoring the facts, rejecting the obvious and refusing to use their common sense. To acknowledge the truth would require confronting your own part in this Ponzi debt charade disguised as an economic system. It is easier to believe a big lie than think critically and face up to decades of irrational behavior and reckless conduct.

What’s In Your GDP

“The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is one of the broader measures of economic activity and is the most widely followed business indicator reported by the U.S. government. Upward growth biases built into GDP modeling since the early 1980s, however, have rendered this important series nearly worthless as an indicator of economic activity. The popularly followed number in each release is the seasonally adjusted, annualized quarterly growth rate of real (inflation-adjusted) GDP, where the current-dollar number is deflated by the BEA’s estimates of appropriate price changes. It is important to keep in mind that the lower the inflation rate used in the deflation process, the higher will be the resulting inflation-adjusted GDP growth.” – John Williams – Shadowstats

GDP is the economic statistic bankers, politicians and media pundits use to convince the masses the economy is growing and their lives are improving. Therefore, it is the statistic most likely to be manipulated, twisted and engineered in order to portray the storyline required by the oligarchs. Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth usually marks a recession. Those in power do not like to report recessions, so data “massaging” has been required over the last few decades to generate the required result. Prior to 1991 the government reported the broader GNP, which includes the GDP plus the balance of international flows of interest and dividend payments. Once we became a debtor nation, with massive interest payments to foreigners, reporting GNP became inconvenient. It is not reported because it is approximately $900 billion lower than GDP. The creativity of our keepers knows no bounds. In July of 2013 the government decided they had found a more “accurate” method for measuring GDP and simply retroactively increased GDP by $500 billion out of thin air. It’s amazing how every “more accurate” accounting adjustment improves the reported data. The economic growth didn’t change, but GDP was boosted by 3%. These adjustments pale in comparison to the decades long under-reporting of inflation baked into the GDP calculation.

As John Williams pointed out, GDP is adjusted for inflation. The higher inflation factored into the calculation, the lower reported GDP. The deflator used by the BEA in their GDP calculation is even lower than the already bastardized CPI. According to the BEA, there has only been 32% inflation since the year 2000. They have only found 1.4% inflation in the last year and only 7.1% in the last five years. You’d have to be a zombie from the Walking Deador an Ivy League economist to believe those lies. Anyone living in the real world knows their cost of living has risen at a far greater rate. According to the government, and unquestioningly reported by the compliant co-conspirators in the the corporate media, GDP has grown from $10 trillion in 2000 to $17 trillion today. Even using the ridiculously low inflation BEA adjustment yields an increase from $12.4 trillion to only $15.9 trillion in real terms. That pitiful 28% growth over the last fourteen years is dramatically overstated, as revealed in the graph below. Using a true rate of inflation exposes the grand fraud being committed by those in power. The country has been in a never ending recession since 2000.

Your normalcy bias is telling you this is impossible. Your government tells you we have only experienced a recession from the third quarter of 2008 through the third quarter of 2009. So despite experiencing two stock market crashes, the greatest housing crash in history, and a worldwide financial system implosion the authorities insist we’ve had a growing economy 93% of the time over the last fourteen years. That mental anguish you are feeling is the cognitive dissonance of wanting to believe your government, but knowing they are lying. It is a known fact the government, in conspiracy with Greenspan, Congress and academia, have systematically reduced the reported CPI based upon hedonistic quality adjustments, geometric weighting alterations, substitution modifications, and the creation of incomprehensible owner’s equivalent rent calculations. Since the 1700s consumer inflation had been estimated by measuring price changes in a fixed-weight basket of goods, effectively measuring the cost of maintaining a constant standard of living. This began to change in the early 1980s with the Greenspan Commission to “save” Social Security and came to a head with the Boskin Commission in 1995.

Simply stated, the Greenspan/Boskin Commissions’ task was to reduce future Social Security payments to senior citizens by deceitfully reducing CPI and allowing politicians the easy way out. Politicians would lose votes if they ever had to directly address the unsustainability of Social Security. Therefore, they allowed academics to work their magic by understating the CPI and stealing $700 billion from retirees in the ten years ending in 2006. With 10,000 baby boomers per day turning 65 for the next eighteen years, understating CPI will rob them of trillions in payments. This is a cowardly dishonest method of extending the life of Social Security.

If CPI was calculated exactly as it was computed prior to 1983, it would have averaged between 5% and 10% over the last fourteen years. Even computing it based on the 1990 calculation prior to the Boskin Commission adjustments, would have produced annual inflation of 4% to 7%. A glance at an inflation chart from 1872 through today reveals the complete and utter failure of the Federal Reserve in achieving their stated mandate of price stability. They have managed to reduce the purchasing power of your dollar by 95% over the last 100 years. You may also notice the net deflation from 1872 until 1913, when the American economy was growing rapidly. It is almost as if the Federal Reserve’s true mandate has been to create inflation, finance wars, perpetuate the proliferation of debt, artificially create booms and busts, enrich their Wall Street owners, and impoverish the masses. Happy Birthday Federal Reserve!!!

When you connect the dots you realize the under-reporting of inflation benefits the corporate fascist surveillance state. If the government was reporting the true rate of inflation, mega-corporations would be forced to pay their workers higher wages, reducing profits, reducing corporate bonuses, and sticking a pin in their stock prices. The toady economists at the Federal Reserve would be unable to sustain their ludicrous ZIRP and absurd QEfinity stock market levitation policies. Reporting a true rate of inflation would force long-term interest rates higher. These higher rates, along with higher COLA increases to government entitlements, would blow a hole in the deficit and force our spineless politicians to address our unsustainable economic system. There would be no stock market or debt bubble. If the clueless dupes watching CNBC bimbos and shills on a daily basis were told the economy has been in fourteen year downturn, they might just wake up and demand accountability from their leaders and an overhaul of this corrupt system.

Mother Should I Trust the Government?

We know the BEA has deflated GDP by only 32% since 2000. We know the BLS reports the CPI has only risen by 37% since 2000. Should I trust the government or trust the facts and my own eyes? The data is available to see if the government figures pass the smell test. If you are reading this, you can remember your life in 2000. Americans know what it cost for food, energy, shelter, healthcare, transportation and entertainment in 2000, but they unquestioningly accept the falsified inflation figures produced by the propaganda machine known as our government. The chart below is a fairly comprehensive list of items most people might need to live in this world. A critical thinking individual might wonder how the government can proclaim inflation of 32% to 37% over the last fourteen years, when the true cost of living has grown by 50% to 100% for most daily living expenses. The huge increases in property taxes, sales taxes, government fees, tolls and income taxes aren’t even factored in the chart. It seems gold has smelled out the currency debasement and the lies of our leaders. This explains the concerted effort by the powers that be to suppress the price of gold by any means necessary.

Living Expense

Jan-00

Mar-14

% Increase

Gallon of gas

$1.27

$3.51

176.4%

Barrel of oil

$24.11

$100.00

314.8%

Fuel oil per gallon

$1.19

$4.07

242.0%

Electricity per Kwh

$0.084

$0.134

59.5%

Gas per therm

$0.712

$1.078

51.4%

Dozen eggs

$0.97

$2.00

106.2%

Coffee per lb

$3.40

$5.20

52.9%

Ground Beef per lb.

$1.90

$3.73

96.3%

Postage stamp

$0.33

$0.49

48.5%

Movie ticket

$5.25

$10.25

95.2%

New car

$20,300.00

$31,500.00

55.2%

Annual healthcare spending per capita

$4,550.00

$9,300.00

104.4%

Average private college tuition

$22,000.00

$37,000.00

68.2%

Avg home price (Case Shiller)

$161,000.00

$242,000.00

50.3%

Avg monthly rent (Case Shiller)

$635.00

$890.00

40.2%

Ounce of gold

$279.00

$1,334.00

378.1%

Mother, you should not trust the government. There is no doubt they have systematically under-reported inflation based on any impartial assessment of the facts. The reality that we remain stuck in a fourteen year recession is borne out by the continued decline in vehicle miles driven (at 1995 levels) due to declining commercial activity, the millions of shuttered small businesses, and the proliferation of Space Available signs in strip malls and office parks across the land. The fact there are only 8 million more people employed today than were employed in 2000, despite the working age population growing by 35 million, might be a clue that we remain in recession. If that isn’t enough proof for you, than maybe a glimpse at real median household income, retail sales and housing will put the final nail in the coffin of your cognitive dissonance.

The government and their media mouthpieces expect the ignorant masses to believe they have advanced their standard of living, with median household income growing from $40,800 to $52,500 since 2000. But, even using the badly flawed CPI to adjust these figures into real terms reveals real median household income to be 7.3% below the level of 2000. Using a true inflation figure would cause a CNBC talking head to have an epileptic seizure.

The picture is even bleaker when broken down into the age of households, with younger households suffering devastating real declines in household income since 2000. I guess all those retail clerk, cashier, waitress, waiter, food prep, and housekeeper jobs created over the last few years aren’t cutting the mustard. Maybe that explains the 30 million increase (175% increase) in food stamp recipients since 2000, encompassing 19% of all households in the U.S. Luckily the banking oligarchs were able to convince the pliable masses to increase their credit card, auto and student loan debt from $1.5 trillion to $3.1 trillion over the fourteen year descent into delusion.

When you get your head around this unprecedented decline in household income over the last fourteen years, along with the 50% to 100% rise in costs to live in the real world, as opposed to the theoretical world of the Federal Reserve and BLS, you will understand the long term decline in retail sales reflected in the following chart. When you adjust monthly retail sales for gasoline (an additional tax), inflation (understated), and population growth, you understand why retailers are closing thousands of stores and hurdling towards inevitable bankruptcy. Retail sales are 6.9% below the June 2005 peak and 4% below levels reached in 2000. And this is with millions of retail square feet added over this time frame. We know the dramatic surge from the 2009 lows was not prompted by an increase in household income. So how did the 11% proliferation of spending happen?

The up swell in retail spending began to accelerate in late 2010. Considering credit card debt outstanding is at exactly where it was in October 2010, it seems consumers playing with their own money turned off the spigot of speculation. It has been non-revolving debt that has skyrocketed from $1.63 trillion in February 2010 to $2.26 trillion today. This unprecedented 39% rise in four years has been engineered by the government, using your tax dollars and the tax dollars of unborn generations. The Federal government has complete control of the student loan market and with their 85% ownership of Ally Financial, the largest auto financing company, a dominant position in the auto loan market. The peddling of $400 billion of subprime student loan debt and $200 billion of subprime auto loan debt has created the illusion of a retail recovery. The student loan debt has been utilized by University of Phoenix MBA wannabes to buy iGadgets, the latest PS3 version of Grand Theft Auto and the latest glazed donut breakfast sandwich on the market. It’s nothing but another debt financed bubble that will end in tears for the American taxpayer, as hundreds of billions will be written off.

The fake retail recovery pales in comparison to the wolves of Wall Street produced housing recovery sham. They deserve an Academy Award for best fantasy production. The Federal Reserve fed Wall Street hedge fund purchase of millions of foreclosed shanties across the nation has produced media proclaimed home price increases of 10% to 30% in cities across the country. Withholding foreclosures from the market and creating artificial demand with free money provided by the Federal Reserve has temporarily added $4 trillion of housing net worth and reduced the number of underwater mortgages on the books of the Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks. The percentage of investor purchases and cash purchases is at all-time highs, while the percentage of first time buyers is at all-time lows. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can look at the long-term chart of mortgage applications and realize we are still in a recession. Applications are 35% below levels at the depths of the 2008/2009 recession. Applications are 65% below levels at the housing market peak in 2005. They are even 35% below 2000 levels. There is no real housing recovery, despite the propaganda peddled by the NAR, CNBC, and Wall Street. It’s a fraud.

It is the pinnacle of arrogance and hubris that a few Ivy League educated economists sitting in the Marriner Eccles Building in the swamps of Washington D.C., who have never worked a day in their lives at a real job, think they can create wealth and pull the levers of money creation to control the American and global financial systems. All they have done is perfect the art of bubble finance in order to enrich their owners at the expense of the rest of us. Their policies have induced unwarranted hope and speculation on a grand scale. Greenspan and Bernanke have provoked multiple bouts of extreme speculation in stocks and housing over the last 15 years, with the subsequent inevitable collapses. Fed encouraged gambling does not create wealth it just redistributes it from the peasants to the aristocracy. The Fed has again produced an epic bubble in stock and bond valuations which will result in another collapse. Normalcy bias keeps the majority from seeing the cliff straight ahead. Federal Reserve monetary policies have distorted financial markets, created extreme imbalances, encouraged excessive risk taking, and ruined the lives of working class people. Take a long hard look at the chart below and answer one question. Was QE designed to benefit Main Street or Wall Street?

The average American has experienced a fourteen year recession caused by the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve. Our leaders could have learned the lesson of two Fed induced collapses in the space of eight years and voluntarily abandoned the policies of reckless credit expansion, instead embracing policies encouraging saving, capital investment and balanced budgets. They have chosen the same cure as the disease, which will lead to crisis, catastrophe and collapse.

“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” – Ludwig von Mises

To use an analogy, it's much like a person that has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. They know they are going to die, but do whatever they can in their power to avoid the inevitable. Often bankrupting their families as an unintended consequence.

America’s transition from a private market economy into a centrally planned economy is deliberate, as you say. The Fed's Keynesian economic policy is the path to socialism, to a one-world socialist state by an elite power complex whose leaders intend to eventually attain total global control.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., a Harvard professor and co-founder of Americans for Democractic Action (ADA) and President John Kennedy’s special assistant, wrote in 1947:

“If socialism (i.e., ownership or control by the State of all significant means of production) is to preserve democracy it must be brought about step by step in a way which will not disrupt the fabric of custom, law and mutual confidence upon which personal rights depend.

“That is, the transition must be piecemeal; it must be parliamentary; it must respect civil liberties and due process of law. Socialism by such (gradual) means used to seem fantastic to the hard-eyed melodramatists of the Leninist persuasion; but even Stalin is reported to have told Harold Laski* recently that it might be possible…there seems no inherent obstacle to the gradual advance of socialism in the United States through a series of New Deals.

"Socialism, then, appears quite practical within this frame of reference, as a long-term proposition. It’s gradual advance might well preserved order and law… the active agents in effecting the transition will probably be, not the working classes, but some combination of lawyers, business and labor managers, politicians and intellectuals, in the manner of the New Deal.”

* Laski was an executive member of the socialist Fabian Society during 1922–1936, was a professor at the Fabian London School of Economics from 1926 to 1950 and after 1930 shifted to a Marxist emphasis on class conflict and the need for a workers' revolution, which he hinted might be violent ( i.e, not through Fabian gradualism). He served as the chairman of the British Labour Party during 1945–1946, (info from Wikipedia)

“ I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”

I have no doubts that Woodrow had no real regrets. He was well compensated for his role in the biggest looting in history. That quote was for public consumption. Take it for what its worth - which is less than a modern copper coated zinc penny.

The same stupid fantasy of mankind that someone can be trusted, who will give out your personal or societal money with no personal consequences nor control. There is no "good" king, nor banker, nor politician, nor woman that can be trusted. "Power corrupts." Giving out a trillion dollars a year corrupts absolutely. Trust is the common vice of the fool.

In Orwell’s Animal Farm, the aging horse Boxer who had done most of the hard work on the farm was sick and could not work anymore.

“He looked forward to the peaceful days that he would spend in the corner of the big pasture. It would be the first time that he had leisure to study and improve his mind. He intended, he said, to devote the rest of his life to learning the remaining twenty-two letters of the alphabet.”

Then a van came to take Boxer away to the ”veterinary” for his ailments, according to the ruling pigs who had moved into the Farmer Jones’ farmhouse.

"The animals crowded round the van."Good-bye, Boxer!" they chorused, "Good-bye!

But the donkey, Benjamin, shouted, ”Fools! Do you not see what is written on the side of the van? 'Alfred Simmonds, Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler, Willington. Dealer in Hides and Bone-Meal, Kennels Supplied.’ Do you not understand what this means? They are taking Boxer to the knacker’s!”

Boxer's friend, the mare, Clover, cried in a terrible voice, "Boxer! Get out! Get out quickly! They're taking you to your death!"

"All the animals took up the cry of 'Get out Boxer. Get out!' But the van was already gathering speed and drawing away from them. It was uncertain whether Boxer had understood what Clover had said but a moment later his face disappeared from the window and there was a sound of a tremendous drumming of hoofs inside the van. He was trying to kick he way out. The time had been when a few kicks from Boxer's hoofs would have smashed the van to matchwood.

"But alas! His strength had left him; and in a few moments the sound of drumming hoofs grew fainter and died away."

The pigs then explained to the animals that the glue factory writing on the van only meant that the veterinary had bought the van and had not yet changed the wording.

The animals were relieved and believed. Later, the pigs explained that Boxer had died at the veterinary and for some reason Boxer’s body could not be returned.

Such is the pathetic belief of Americans in a system not only draining away their freedom but their lives and estates, a system constantly funneling the work of their labor and savings to the pigs in the farmhouse, the owners and operators of the Federal Reserve Sysem.

It's in the back seat of my car now. I'll start it just as soon as I finish 1984.

Goddamnit! I wish the proles would wake up and start burning DC to the ground. Feinswine, Pelosi, McCain, Boner and co. are nothing but two bit venezuelan dictators. God, please rain fire down on washington.

...approximately 100 years ago to date the FRBs was (12/13/1913) created-- there have been two World Wars hence, {(wwi 1914-1919 [usa~ 1917-18])/(wwii 1939- 1945 [usa 1941-45])}-- and with the end of wwii came the birth of the 'Nuclear Age Family'... brought to the entire globe in such a short span of history which is nothing moar than the evolutionary continuity of time?

... in such a short period of time as predicted(?) the world is now capable of annihilation from just one rogue (Pakistan /N. Korea,.. etel) state, going MAD!?!

, since 911 to present, (?just how many years does it take?) to brings us upon the final stage of a 'Nuclear Age Family'-- now having past (time actually speeds-up as we approach self-immolation?) adulthood! That's bad by the way...

the creation of the FRBs has brought the world's economies into the hands of a few, with the power to create World War's, but it to has cross'd the rubicon in what should be their demise or a fait accompli for the entire planet!

for wwi was all about economies as was wwii in ending a depression that actually never ended without creating mini-wars upon mini-wars til one too-many-mini-wars lights the dooms day fuse

it is up to the entire world to bring about a moar equitable and fair trading platform that each country can determine independently rather than a centralized entity that answers only to a question mark?

I see a recession as a cyclical thing, a dip, a brief decline. I see a depression as going down and staying down, which is where we are now. The question is, what's next? What do we call it when the very underpinnings of our economy stop, die or cease to exist? You can have numerous near death experiences, but you only have one death experience. Is what we face the end?

Recessions are inventory events, occur fairly frequently, and rebounds are fast. Depressions are debt events, occur fairly infrequently, and rebounds are slower. The third and rarest is Destitution, which are collapse events from which there is no rebound.

“The art of economics consists in looking not merely as the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” – Henry Hazlitt

Hate paying taxes? Then consider a home on the range, and keep as far away from New York as possible.

The tax burden the average American pays varies tremendously, and depends a lot on where you live, according to a study by financial social media company WalletHub.

The study ranked all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

An American making the median national income, driving an average car and living in the median-priced home could end up paying either 60 percent less or almost 40 percent more than the national average, based only on the state one calls home.

The study’s analysts created a profile of the “average American” based on median income ($65,596), median home price ($174,600) and other data, and then calculated how much the person would spend on taxes living in every state. It drew on data from several sources, including the Census Bureau, the Internal Revenue Service, the Tax Foundation, and even the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (for taxes paid on liquor).

As a child I ran up to with glee a cute donkey in a pen in Taos New Mexico. When I got close I realized he was miserable, eyes weeping as ticks infested his entire face and horseflys continually dabbed what little moisture there was.

Such is the state of our nation. The Fed needs to be cleared out and closed: it is an infestation.

Any trading marketplace (nation) needs a properly managed Medium of Exchange (MOE). Amazingly, none has ever existed. One needs to ask why ... and as always the answer lies with "cui bono". The proper value for INFLATION is a "guaranteed" zero, all the time, everywhere.

Money is "a promise to complete a trade". This is obvious when you examine the three steps of a trade: (1) Negotiation;(2) Promise to deliver; (3) Delivery. In simple barter, (2) and (3) happen simultaneously on the spot. Money allows (3) to happen over different times and over different spaces.

With a properly managed MOE, trading promises are freely "certified" at step (2) and these certificates circulate in the marketplace as items of barter. They can do this because they can be guaranteed to hold their value over all time and space. This makes trading much simpler because the traders don't have a concern for a changing value of the MOE itself. They know it never changes. Thus they can concentrate on the object of their trade.

They have no concern about the "time value of money" ... it is zero. They have no concern about the changing value of some commodity backing their trade ... there is none ... it is backed by the marketplace itself. They have no concern about finding a capitalist and meeting his requirements for backing their trade ... no capital is needed.

Once the trading promise (2) has been made and certified (money created), the trader's focus is on (3) delivery of his promise. If he delivers as agreed, the money is returned and extinguished. If he fails to deliver, the money he fails to return must be recovered by INTEREST collections. The operative relation is: INFLATION = DEFAULT - INTEREST.

DEFAULTS must be transparently monitored and immediately met with equal INTEREST collections. This "guarantees" INFLATION to be zero.

In practice, actuarial sciences employed in the insurance industry are brought to bear. DEFAULTs are like RISK; INTEREST collections are like PREMIUMS. There is no "investment income". The costs of management is trivial with respect to the volumes involved. Traders are classified according to the risks of their trades and their propensity to DEFAULT.

Why have we never had a properly managed MOE? Because our MOE managers (now the Fed) don't want one. They are a collection of international bankers with a farming operation. Through manipulation of INTEREST and distortions of the supply/demand ratio for MOE, they are able to create a cycle (they call it the business cycle).

Controlling this cycle they are able to grow and contract the whole economy at will and profit by opportunities the fore knowledge provides. Plus, the Fed profits by the 4% INFLATION they have built in since their 1913 inception. Even now they are so stupid (yeh, stupid like a fox) to claim 2% INFLATION is the right number.

We will know we can have a properly managed MOE when we have easy access to a time series of DEFAULTs. Look around. You won't find one in all of history but time series of INFLATION and INTEREST seem to be easy to find.